Haraway/Halberstam

Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto one of her main points is that “We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs.” According to Harraway, a cyborg is a “cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.” Halberstam goes deeply into this, directly citing Haraway’s essay. Halberstam refers to Haraway’s description of a cyborg as “a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centers structuring any possibility of historical transformation” and states that it is “particularly useful for feminists who seek to avoid the ideological dangers of recourse to an authentic female self.”

Basically, Haraway is discussing how humans are both natural and socially constructed. These social constructions are what can bring us down. Women specifically strive to achieve the ideal version of what they believe a woman is and should be. Both Haraway and Halberstam seem to describe the cyborg as good but also dangerous – according to Halberstam, the “female cyborg becomes a terrifying cultural icon because it hints at the radical potential of a fusion of femininity and intelligence.”

I found the Haraway reading to be very difficult, and the Halbrstam to be a bit better. While I agree with their point about the views on women and defining gender, it was hard to get through and I’m not entirely sold on the concept of a cyborg or what it means for feminism.